Cries of London Gingerbread

HOT SPICE GINGERBREAD SMOKING HOT - Plate 12 (Cries of London) by Francis Wheatley, R. A. (1747-1801)
Antique Colour Engraving from series 'Cries of London' of Street Sellers 19th Century England, Plate 12

Hot Spice Gingerbread Smoking Hot - Colour stipple engraving on vellum.
June 25th, 1795 - Engraved by 'G. Vendramini' after a picture by 'Francis Wheatley'.

Picture size 18 x 23 cm - Frame size 36.5 x 29 cm - Framed and ready to adorn your wall.

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Giovanni, 'John' Vendramini (1769-1839) was an Italian engraver and excellent draughtsman with an English wife. He spent two years in Russia where he was so appreciated by the Russian Emperor and his court that Vendramini was denied a passport when he wanted to return to England. He eventually managed to escape disguised as a messenger, returned to England where, many years later, he died.

About This Artwork - a breathtaking image of a gingerbread street hawker/vendor from Wheatley's famous "Cries of London" series. The "Cries of London" was a recurring theme in English printmaking for over three centuries. These prints form a visual record of London's "lower orders", the peddlers, charlatans, street hawkers, milkmaids, and grocers who made their living on the city streets. They give the viewer a glimpse of a long forgotten London where tradesmen would advertise their wares with a musical shout or a melodic rhyme.

Different versions of the "Cries" vary in tone from idealistic visions of contented street vendors to satirical caricatures of humorous urban figures. One of the most famous series of "London Cries" is the group of pretty pictures executed by Francis Wheatley. Wheatley's series was immensely popular and enjoyed a long period of success in the English print shops. Between 1792 and 1795 Wheatley exhibited 14 paintings of the "Cries" at the Royal Academy. The pictures attracted a great deal of attention at the exhibition, and Colnaghi & Co. quickly agreed to publish a suite of engravings after Wheatley's famous series.

Only thirteen of the fourteen paintings were engraved and they were offered for sale individually or in a portfolio collection. The prints, which were executed in stipple, were engraved by some the most noted engravers in England; artists such as Giovanni Vendramini, Luigi Schiavonetti and Thomas Gaugain all contributed their work to the series. Complete collections of the "Cries" remained immensely popular, and by 1910 they were fetching more than James Audubon's folio "Birds of America" at auction.

Life and Work - Wheatley was born at Wild Court, Covent Garden, London, the son of a master tailor. He studied at William Shipley's drawing school and the Royal Academy, and won several prizes from the Society of Arts. He assisted in the decoration of Vauxhall, and aided John Hamilton Mortimer in painting a ceiling for Lord Melbourne at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire.

In his youth, his life was irregular and dissipated. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778, built up a good practice and was praised by the critics. But he fell in with extravagant company and was forced to flee his creditors: so he eloped to Ireland with Elizabeth Gresse, wife of a fellow artist John Alexander Gresse (1741–1794).

In the summer of 1779 he was in Dublin with Elizabeth whom he passed off as his wife, and established himself there as a portrait-painter, executing, among other works, the best-known interior of the Irish House of Commons. He also painted the review of the Dublin regiments of the Irish Volunteers in College Green in November 1779, the basis for a best-selling print bought by numerous Irish Patriot supporters. He was careful to include the grandees of Dublin and also exotic visitors such as Princess Dashkov.

The circumstances of his private life were revealed, and he returned to London. He produced small landscapes, portraits, or street scenes, and began to work in imitation of the French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze. His scene from the Gordon Riots of 1780 was engraved by James Heath; this was noted as one of his best, but was lost to a fire. He painted several subjects for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, designed illustrations to Bell's edition of the poets, and practised to some small extent as an etcher and mezzotint-engraver.

It is, however, as a painter, in both oil and water-colour, of landscapes and rustic subjects that Wheatley is best remembered. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1790, and an academician in the following year. He married in 1787 one of his most popular models, the young Clara Maria Leigh (1768–1838), who was also an artist. They had a daughter, also Clara Maria, born in 1788. After Wheatley died, his widow married the Irish actor Alexander Pope, and as Mrs Pope she was known as a painter of flowers and portraits.

HERE is a beautiful and interesting article written about Wheatley’s Cries of London
by the ‘Gentle Author’ (spitalfieldslife.com) - Article: January 26, 2011

Francis Wheatley exhibited his series of oil paintings entitled the “Cries of London” at the Royal Academy between 1792 and 1795. Two year earlier, the forty-one year old painter had been elected to the Academy in preference to the King’s nominee and, as a consequence, he never secured any further commissions for portraits from the aristocracy. Losing his income entirely, what should have been the crowning glory of his career was its unravelling – Wheatley was declared insolvent in 1793 and struggled to make a living until his death in 1801, when the Royal Academy paid his funeral expenses.

Yet in the midst of this turmoil, Wheatley created these sublime images of street sellers that – although seen at the time as of little consequence beside his aristocratic portraits – are now the works upon which his reputation rests. Born in Covent Garden in 1747, Wheatley was ideally qualified to portray these hawkers because he grew up amongst them and their cries, echoing in the streets around the market. You will recognise the old stone pillars of the market buildings that still stand today in a couple of these pictures, all of which could be located specifically in that vicinity.  However, these pictures are far from social reportage as we understand it, and you may notice a certain similarity between many of the women portrayed in these pictures, for which it is believed Mrs Wheatley – herself a painter and exhibitor at the Royal Academy – was the model. Look again, and you will also see that variants on the same ginger and white terrier occur throughout these paintings too.

In spite of the idealised quality of these pictures, I am drawn to these “Cries of London,” as a project that places working people at the centre of the picture, and represents them as individuals of stature and presence. The body language of subservience is only present when customers are in the frame, as you will see in the Knife Grinder and Cherry Seller below, whilst the lone Strawberry Seller, Match Seller and Primrose Seller all gaze out at us with assured status, as our equals. Taking this a stage further, the final three pictures, the Ballad Seller, the Gingerbread Seller and the Turnip Seller portray sellers and customers meeting eye to eye – dealing on a level – and with a discernible erotic charge in the air.

Although coming too late to save his career, Wheatley was well served by his engravers who created the prints which brought recognition for his “Cries of London,” as the most beautiful and most popular series of prints on this subject of all time, with editions still available into the early twentieth century. In fact, when I examined this set in the archive of the Bishopsgate Institute, I realised that many were familiar to me from chocolate boxes and biscuit tins, and once glimpsed in frames in the houses of elderly relatives and the seaside hotels of my childhood.

Luigi Schiavonetti, born in Bassano in 1765, engraved the first three plates, the Primrose Seller, the Milk Maids and the Orange Seller, with lush velvety stippled tones – a style that was maintained by the three subsequent engravers (Cardon, Vendramini and Gaugain), when Schiavonetti became too successful and expensive for such a modest project. The “Cries of London” were sold at seven shillings and sixpence for a plain set and sixteen shillings coloured, and the fact all thirteen were issued is itself a measure of their popularity.

It touches me to understand that Francis Wheatley chose to paint these “Cries of London” at the time he was losing grip of his life, struggling under the pressure of increasing debt, because they cannot have been an obvious commercial proposition. And I like to surmise that these graceful images celebrate the qualities of the ordinary working people, which Wheatley experienced first-hand, growing up in Covent Garden, and chose to witness in this subtly political set of pictures, existing in noble contrast to the portraits of aristocratic patrons who had shunned him when he was in need.

One cold winter’s morning, tracing my way through the narrow alleys at the heart of the City of London recently, I came upon singing and it stopped me in my tracks. This was a recording of the “Cries of London,” installed there by a composer, and it was a welcome reminder of the beauty of these songs, exploiting the acoustics of the City to elegant and haunting effect. Already a year has passed since the newspaper sellers went, seemingly un-noticed, and now it lifts my spirits to hear the fruit seller in Sclater St Market each Sunday with his distinctive rhythmic cry, “Bananas, bananas, bananas,” – because in my mind this is the very last reverberation of that vast symphony of many thousands of voices echoing down the centuries and through the streets of London to our present day. The Cries of London.